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Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Wheels Keep on Turning

We're pretty much at the halfway point of the Tour de Fleece, and I am moving right along on all my projects. Usually I don't work on more than one spinning project at a time, but amazingly I'm finding it completely manageable to have three spinning projects going at once this year.

For starters, there are the sock batts I've been spinning on my spindle. I've mainly been working on them during my lunch break during the week, but I've found that the spindle is also handy on the weekend when a certain 3-year-old wants me to hang out with her in the family room while she plays and there's no convenient place to set up a wheel. I've finished the second of six batts (so 2 oz. out of a total of 6), and I'm making a marked improvement at building a stable cop to get everything on in one go.

I'm doubtful that I will spin all 6 oz. by the end of the Tour, but I will have made a decent dent in the project. More importantly, I've rediscovered my love of spindling -- it's quite addictive. I still, however, do not much care for plying anything but a small amount on a spindle, so if all the singles are finished after the Tour is over, I'll likely ply them on a wheel.

I also finished the second bobbin of Material Girl singles (Crown Mountain Farms superwash merino) on the Lendrum, which turned out very different from the first. I have no doubt that the third will be different still and that I'll be quite surprised at what the plied yarn looks like. I'm hoping to finish up the third bobbin and ply by the weekend.

Finally, on the miniSpinner, I started my second attempt at spinning for Water Music for the Through the Loops summer shawl knitalong. This is Crown Mountain Farms corriedale pencil roving, and with this prep, I'm spinning a lot finer.

This has been a great project for the evening, because it's fairly mindless. The roving is so thin that it only requires a tiny bit of drafting, and I'm able to do that without having to look at it constantly. That's great when you've had a long, exhausting day and you'd really like to watch something pleasant (this week it's Lark Rise to Candleford season one again) instead of thinking!